Now he was conscious—not of any inclination to spend an hour away from Agnes when he might possibly be with her—but only of concern for this blue-eyed, light-haired, warm, ardent girl from among his own people.
“I don’t know what else you’re doing, Cynthia Gail,” he said both names as he had that time he had carried her, “but I suppose it’s dangerous. That’s all right,” he added hastily, “if the danger’s necessary; if it’s not—well, it’s foolishness, you know. I wouldn’t ask you to stop doing anything which could catch us another haul like De Trevenac; but that may be more than a deadly game.” He held out his hand to her and, when she placed hers in his, he held her fingers firmly. “Don’t be foolish, please!”
“Don’t you!” she pleaded to him in return; and the sudden broaching of the passion which had been below astounded her as much as it dumfounded him. “You take no regard for yourself—none, none at all!”
“That’s—newspaper nonsense,” he managed. He released her hand, but her grasp held him now and he could not break it except violently.
“It’s not! I’ve talked to men who know you, who’ve flown with you! They all say the same thing; and they all love you for it; you’ve no regard for yourself, numbers against you or anything when you’ve something you’ve determined to do! You do it! Oh, I wouldn’t have you not—I wouldn’t want you different. But the same need now doesn’t exist!”
Her fingers had slipped from him and they stood back a bit, both breathing hard and very flushed as they faced each other.
“We’re outnumbered in France this spring as never before,” he informed her soberly. “It’s not generally—discussed; but, since Russia’s absolutely out, that’s the fact.”
“I know,” she said. “But what I meant was that you, and just a few others, aren’t the only Americans here now. Oh, I’ve been able to understand why you’ve flown and fought as you have, why your friends are almost all fallen now and you, only by the grace of our God, are left! I think I understood some of your feeling even before I knew you and heard you speak. You and your friends whom you thought I insulted—you, for a while, had to do the fighting for all America; a score or so of you had to do, you felt, for a hundred million of us who wouldn’t come in! But we’re coming now; a good many of us are here!”
“Many?” he repeated. “A couple of hundred thousand among millions. And the German millions are almost ready to strike! Forgive me, I didn’t mean to scold you ever again for America; but—oh, you’ll see! The husbands, and fathers, and the boys of France, the husbands, and fathers, and the boys of England taking the blow again, giving themselves to the guns to save us all while our young men watch!”
She gazed up at him, but stayed silent now. Terror seized her that she had done only harm, that she had stirred him to greater regardlessness. His anger against her people, whom she defended, had—as at that first time—banished his feeling for her. When he gave her his hand again, he barely touched her fingers; and he was gone.